Here’s a software release I don’t think most observers saw coming: Roland has new software for computers and iPads that lets you edit visually. The underlying VariPhrase technology is familiar from other Roland products, though combined here with something Roland calls V-Remastering.

The upshot is this: you begin with a heat map-like visual of a sound’s spectrum, then pull on components of a mix, isolating the volume levels of different parts of a track. Think visual mash-ups and karaoke tracks, as well as clean-up.

What can you do once you have those components? Isolate components, adjust their mix, and add effects and noise cancel.

Once isolated, you can also change pitch, time, and formant independently. You don’t get note-by-note control in the same way that you do with Celemony’s Melodyne product, but you do get independent pitch and time. (I’m not yet clear on whether that’s also in the iPad version.)

There’s also a simplified iPad version called R-MIX Tab, a new move for Roland’s software lineup. As you can see in the screenshots, you can’t do as much with the iPad edition, but it still looks relatively capable. Oh, and that “Tab” name implies that maybe Roland is at least considering tablet tech running Android and Windows 8.

Pricing and availability information were not yet available; TBD. I’ll be interested to see how this works, and how people use it. Roland has a slew of announcements; more on the others by tomorrow.

Anyway, can this do what v-synth does? If so one more piece of gear to toss off the want list.

http://Www.nk-e.com nk:e

Did a quick google search last night before bed and saw a music site that listed the expected price as £85.

http://Www.nk-e.com nk:e

Um…it's nothing like the v-synth btw.

ALTZ

The UI is a bit old-skool. And, the software is a bit like a toy. Not serious enough. It looks like a joke to me. Roland should go back making synth. I mean a proper synth, not the Jupiter 80.

http://i5music.net Jim Aikin

From this write-up, I don't understand the functionality of the software. "Pull on components of a mix"? "Isolate components"? You mean, like, I have a mix of a full band, and I'm going to be able to isolate the guitar and add delay to just the guitar? My experience with Celemony's polyphonic pitch detection/correction algorithm (last year … maybe they've improved it) was that it just plain didn't work reliably. So I would be really, really surprised if Roland can succeed at this hat trick.

kconnor9000

Can't wait, looks pretty cool for 85 quid. I've been having some fun trying to isolate some clean samples using multichannel mixes (5.1 DVD re-releases are a godsend) and iZotope RX, which has some pretty nice time/frequency window manipulation just like this. Plus the iZotope interface looks like MovieOS circa 2023. This Roland interface is kinda cool in an old-school, hook a CRT monitor up to a W-50 sampler way … erm, yeah. Brown has NO place in software, imo. End cheeks of a Moog, sure. Anyhow, will be keen to try it out.